All good things are cheap: all bad are very dear.

The poet who walks by moonlight is conscious of a tide in his thought which is to be referred to lunar influence.

Under a government which imprisons any unjustly, the true place for a just man is also a prison.

Man's moral nature is a riddle which only eternity can solve.

Perchance the time will come when we shall not be content to go back and forth upon a raft to some huge Homeric or Shakespearean Indiaman that lies upon the reef, but build a bark out of that wreck and others that are buried in the sands of this desolate island, and such new timber as may be required, in which to sail away to whole new worlds of light and life, where our friends are.

I do not know at first what it is that harms me. The men and things of to-day are wont to be fairer and truer in to-morrow's memory.

If a thousand men were not to pay their tax-bills this year, that would ... [be] the definition of a peaceable revolution, if any such is possible.